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“Canada is a dynamic work in progress.” The AGO questions the country’s past, present and future

Major exhibition of 33 new and recent works explores what it means to be Canadian now
TORONTO — This summer the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) marks Canada’s 150th birthday with an ambitious contemporary exhibition that critically explores three urgent questions through the eyes of some of the country’s best emerging and established artists: where has Canada come from, what it is now, and where is it going?

Opening on June 29, 2017 and taking over the entire fourth floor of the AGO’s Contemporary Tower, Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood is a dynamic exhibition that aims to address the mistakes of the past, rewrite and reclaim history, and move into the future with new insight. The multimedia installation features 33 new and recent projects by artists from across Canada, including Gu Xiong and Yu Gu, Robert Houle, Meryl McMaster, Seth, Esmaa Mohamoud, Ed Pien and Shuvinai Ashoona, among many others.

Bringing together both the familiar and the unexpected with strong Indigenous voices running throughout, Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood is curated by Andrew Hunter, the AGO’s Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art, with a team of invited local artists, activists and educators including Anique Jordan and Quill Christie.

“At the heart of this exhibition is our fundamental belief that Canada is a dynamic work in progress,” says Andrew Hunter. “At this moment, many contemporary artists are reflecting on and challenging what Canada was, is and will be. Through a variety of visual media they are drawing attention to issues of absence, erasure and memory, and asking creatively, ‘How do we move forward as a country?’ Bringing these works together at this exact moment creates a meaningful opportunity for AGO visitors to hear the stories that haven’t been told, and to consider what it means to be Canadian in 2017.”

Acknowledging that Canada’s sesquicentennial represents a narrow slice of time in the larger historical record, the artworks featured engage with a broad range of cultural, traditional, spiritual and land-based stories. The exhibition, which will run to January 2018, invites visitors to hear working artists such as Camille Turner, Camal Pirbhai and Barry Ace explain what this moment means for them.

According to Camille Turner, “it’s our job as artists to really make things visible, to make the context we’re living in visible. And to ask questions. As a Black Canadian, it’s really important to tell the stories of Black Canada that haven’t been part of the national narrative. This history goes back over 400 years.”

“As artists, we have a responsibility to be the voices of our time,” says Camal Pirbhai. “We feel lied to as Canadians. Through our works, we’re exploring a history that wasn’t taught to us. Using contemporary photographs, we uncover these wrongs of the past. The lies of history still exist, but on different levels. It’s imperative to learn about the past and relate our findings to today – that’s the difference between museums and living art; we’re not only talking about history, we’re talking about now.”

“What can art do in this moment?” asks Barry Ace. “In these challenging times of rapidly shifting political, social and cultural change, the artist’s voice is imperative, for it is through the voice of artist that we can see where we have come from; where we are now; and where we are going.”

An extensive catalogue is being created to accompany the exhibition. Arriving in shopAGO in July 2017, the book will feature essays from Andrew Hunter, Dr. Charmaine Nelson, Anique Jordan, Rosie Spooner, Quill Christie, Rachelle Dickenson and Srimoyee Mitra.

“Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.”
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
“Precious time cannot be recovered once lost.”
JACK SPARROW, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

During the rush of time and water, a singular, contemplative moment is captured. With her telephoto lens Toronto artist Laura Millard has captured meltwater from the Columbia Icefields in this series of large scale works. Each one addresses the alarming rate at which our glaciers are receding while at the same time inspiring the viewer to experience a split second within that process.
In each of Millard’s painted photographs every drop has been suspended as a fragment of varying length by altering the camera’s shutter speed and either compressing or extending that instant. Motion, light and space animate our notion of passing time within the image and saturate the photograph with veils of falling water droplets becoming their own prisms against rock beds. Millard then spends much time considering and altering the surfaces of the photos and their elements. Months of careful over-painting lead to an intriguing dialogue between, artist, artwork, and viewer by accentuating some elements while further blurring others and in the process blurring the line between the work’s surface and the illusory space of the photograph.
Meltwater considers time: glaciers that may have taken hundreds of millennia to form are now melting away in the span of a few decades – an instant of that process is captured with a camera compressing those years into 1/60th of a second and then is extended over many months while paint is thoughtfully added.
Laura Millard has widely exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. She currently holds the position of Associate Professor at OCAD University in Toronto.

Living in a world where you can glance at the days’ top stories on your Blackberry in the time it takes you to walk from your bed to the bathroom; or skim your eyes over 24-hour news feeds streamed live from street corners and waiting rooms; it is virtually impossible for us to stay uninformed about what’s going on in the world. Artist Laura Millard’s new series of paintings are asking us to slow down for a moment and consider that he difference between the act of looking at something and seeing it can be a whole world of understanding.

Millard’s Meltwater waterfall paintings immerse us inside Alberta’s dripping Columbia icefield glaciers, which contain the extent of our freshwater supply. Seamlessly melding painting onto photography, Millard has stopped time so we can actually see the slow process of these melting wonders. Using her photographs as a starting point, Millard’s iridescent and opaque brushwork accentuate prismic colours of sun-lit water droplets captured from 1/400th 1/1600th of a second, bringing their light to the foreground, while pushing back the rock face. These contrasts create veils of imaginary layers, pulling us into a deeper sensation of spatiality.